


9-1-1: What's Your Emergency?

by Idealuk



Series: Alex Manes and Eddie Diaz are friends. [1]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV), Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: 12 Days of Malex 2019, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Malex Secret Santa 2019, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21819658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idealuk/pseuds/Idealuk
Summary: I was prompted with "You caught me doing something dangerous and flipped out". I saw 'dangerous' and my brain with 'MY FIREFIGHTER DADDIES!,' and 'You KNOW the Alex and Eddie would made good friends to each other!, immediately thinking up "“… Kind of could have used you here the other day. I beat yo—,” Alex, who had actually been thrilled to be able to at least tell his friend that he ‘got the guy (back, sort of, in his case)’ first, was cut off by a new voice at a distance that rapidly booms louder on the line, and contently sighs before kissing Michael’s neck". That was the string that threaded the needle that I started sewing with to turn all of that in to an actual story.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Alex Manes and Eddie Diaz are friends. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572262
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27
Collections: 12 Days Of Malex 2019





	9-1-1: What's Your Emergency?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mander3_swish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mander3_swish/gifts).



> So, this is my Malex Secret Santa gift for @mander3_swish, who's been waiting exceedingly patiently for their prezzy! Again, I'm so very sorry, and I hope that it's worth the wait. It un-BETA'd. All mistakes are mine. ... Eddie simply doesn't know about Forrest and how telling is that? Every one is bi except for the character played by an out-and-rightfully-proud bi actor.
> 
> ... **It's both, very wordy, _and_ point-of-fact and I'm pinning my reply to an anonymous comment here to kind of explain:**
> 
> I'm not insulted at all! I knowingly took a risk with the layout of this story that had my own head spinning. It does get to a point where I had to actually write in to the story, "It wouldn’t be valid for him to tell her that maybe heaving word vomit is just what they do now. It had been apropos of the occasion when _she’d_ done it," and stop and find my way to more sane approach. The risk taken was to induce the feelings of confusion that occur during an emergency. How this piece is received moving forward will help me decide if I'm going to force myself to try to write in this particularly loaded style ever again (I did some thing similar [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/68672) _years_ ago and I, apparently, didn't learn my lessen🤷🏽).

“Thanks, Eddie, I owe you one. Tell Christopher that I said ‘Hi,’ and, if you don’t tell Evan soon, I will, the fact that I’ve never met the guy means _absolutely shit_ to me”

Kyle can make out an entirely hesitant, and marginally garbled, “His name is Buck” come across the other end of the line from his short distance from Alex in the bunker. The internal chiding of himself for presumptuously deluding himself that referring to his amor no revelado as Evan was _exclusively_ Eddie Diaz’s to do on his own in the city of stars and, more particularly, the privacy of his own head. _It is his given name after all._ Of course other people would call Buck that. The silent ‘You’re one to talk,’ however, came across almost louder than the actual words spoken to the direct listener.

“Yeah, no, I’m _not_ calling any one ‘Buck’. _Ever_ and at least I’ve gone there with mine” is Alex’s jeering retort.

“’Gone there,’ huh?, says the guy about the guy who’s now dating a so-called best friend of his. I’ll leave that level of drama to the ones who are strong enough to take it, thanks, and what kind of name is Guerin?” taunts Eddie while checking a fire truck’s equipment.

“A French and Anglo-Irish last one. Thought that you had to—,” the Call alarm has Alex jolting his phone away from himself with heightened eyebrows as he hangs up, saving Eddie from having to point out, yet again, that Buck _is_ short for _his_ last name, and saving himself from thinking about how he’s omitting the fact that Guerin’s authentic origins aren’t even Earthly, much less Old World European.

Eddie would not have volunteered that being in love with your best friend whom you work with and have made responsible for your son isn’t exactly drama-free either. He thinks that he got lucky that Alex didn’t bring it up.

“… I’ve seen pictures of Eddie,” Kyle thinks out loud after the bunker stops echoing with the alarms ringing, “You two _ever_ …?”.

“Nah. Not my type,” Alex supplies, already knowing where this is going.

“Not ‘angry cowboy’ enough for you?” Kyle looks identical to the first time that he used this term.

“You’d think, given that he’s from Texas, and his now-dead wife left him while he was overseas after their then-infant son, who’s now eight and sharp as a tac enough to drive Eddie crazy all on his own, was diagnosed with CP, but Eddie and Christopher are now _both_ tried-and-true L.A. transplants, the completion of their utter conversion of having a naïve belief in hopeless optimism being epitomized by both falling equally hard for the human Golden Retriever Eddie works with only, auspiciously, right when the wife had been trying to, and _failing_ _at_ , finding _her place_ back in their lives, this failure culminated with her asking Eddie for a divorce right before, like I said, her _dying_ , the Diaz’s abiding infatuation with the one they call Buck and the big city seemingly already provided enough light in their lives that even _that_ didn’t totally tanker their aberrant optimistic outlook on life,” ending this labored sentence under his breath, “except personally and romantically where Eddie and _Evan_ are concerned”. That, and, unlike _this guy_ he’s not even ‘practically’ raising Christopher with, I’m pretty sure that I’m not at a place in my life where I can handle the day-to-day of raising kids with _any_ one, _even if_ they’re half as awesome as his’s. Too much baggage,” appraises Alex, sort of stunning himself by how many words in a row _he_ , let alone _any_ one else on any planet in such a casual setting, has just said, though, not at all surprised by how protective of the two he was coming across as, also not worried that he be taken the wrong way, knowing that Kyle knows him well enough not to go reading any thing other than friendship out of that.

“And ‘secret alien identity’ isn’t?” Kyle quips back in return, though, this time, _he’s_ cogent of the fact that he’s just plainly omitted the recent entrance of Forrest in to their lives, and makes a mental note of how telling it is that his longtime friend hasn’t. He goes on to hypothesize that the man with blue hair would continue to be overshadowed in the eyes of the guy he’s dating as Alex, himself, doesn’t seem to realize that it’s even happening, having done it twice just now with the doctor, and too many times to count with Eddie just on their last phone call alone.

Alex just shrugs. They are Roswellians after all. “… Having my high school bully as my male hag is a real mindfuck” he goes on to state.

Kyle scoffs, and clasps a hand on one of Alex’s shoulders as he leans over him, “I was your best friend first. My becoming evolved and your currently unfortunate choices in female friends just put me back in that fine homonormative role”.

Speaking in his professional opinion, Kyle would like to point out that there is no _medical_ , outside of psychological, explanation for Alex’s repeated discounting of his _actual_ boyfriend, or the elite hacker’s inability to recognize the flagrant breach inside of his physical brain.

Alex couldn’t argue with what has been said aloud despite his desire to do so. He reverts to going over some of the Caulfield files instead.

Kyle is starting to feel bad for Forrest, especially considering who he’s being rebuffed for, “… The guy he’s in to is bi, too?,” he interjects, bringing the conversation back to the overheard phone call, and crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back on the desk.

“According to ‘ _confidential_ ,’ Alex smirks as certain memories of talks with Christopher come to mind and he looks back up at Kyle as the smirk widens, “evidence, but Eddie denies it, being one of those people who believes that they don’t deserve their own true happiness”

“Ah, so _that’s_ the connection,” Kyle clucks to an un-bemused Alex, “… Is _every_ one bi now?”.

Alex bristles, “I’m not, and I don’t know, _Kyle_ , you tell me?,” he sets up as a dare.

Kyle deftly rolls his eyes telling Alex that they were not, in fact, going to talk about the porn, and its variety, Alex had found on the bunker’s main computer a few days ago that he knows that _he_ didn’t put there.

It was a few days later when Alex would, not just talk to a firefighter, but seen a whole bunch of them in action.

The cabin was surrounded by emergency workers as well as Liz, Rosa, Isobel, and Maria, all soot-dusted, as Alex bolts from his truck as fast as his leg and prosthesis would let him, which was getting faster with almost every day now, punching the Lock button on his key fob, as he hears Kyle arrive seconds behind him.

He watches in a haze as the flames that are flouncing about on his home’s roof become completely extinguished by the RFD.

“It’s _my_ house!” he argues as he’s momentarily blocked from entering the charred building, the fireman at guard being waved off by Kyle’s mother, reasoning that the minimal structural damage is already contained and “Maybe _he_ can get through to him”. It’s upon hearing those words when Alex notices the drying tear tracks on Liz’s, Isobel’s, and Maria’s faces, Rosa being the outlier, appearing to others as having come back from the dead even more unmoved by others’ emotions than they remembered her being when they were _all_ younger. Alex knows that there’s some thing else at fault for that appearance of coldness, and, as if on cue, a chill rolls through the soon-to-be veteran as he walks in to his home, finding Jenna and Michael inside.

The banging and yelling becomes audible over the sirens with Kyle shutting the door behind him, having snuck in with his medical bag after Alex, prompted to do so by the sheriff.

“Gu—Guerin! Guerin, stop it, you’re going to kill yourself, and me right along with you, and I would _really_ rather die almost literally any other way!,” Jenna wails with one hand cautiously reached out towards Michael, and the other on the taser at her waist in case that’s ultimately necessary.

The living room is darkened with smoke and the relevant lack of electricity, broken pieces of his furnishings occur to have been flung around the room, though nothing too important or irreplaceable, but, ‘… _Holy fuck!_ ,’ Alex thinks, ‘Is that Guerin’s _completed_ ship console he’s currently smashing in to scattering chards with a broken chair leg in to the middle of Alex’s house?!’.

“That’s enough, Guerin, what ever point you’re trying to make here has clearly been made!”

“Guerin, stop, … _GUERIN!_ ,” both Kyle and Alex are quick to come to the deputy’s aid of trying to subdue the genius mechanic who just happen to be from a different planet who was raging against an actual machine, getting nowhere fast.

“Put the chair leg down, Guerin, I don’t want to have to use this!”

“I also have the tranquilizers that you and Liz made, but I don’t know how I’d square _either_ of those options with the hospital, you know they’d ask questions!”

“The sheriff is already going to!, _what_ were you _thinking_ , Guerin?! … _GUERIN!_ ”

Nothing was working.

“… Uh, I actually already read-in my mom,” Kyle at least has the decency to look like he knows that he’d overstepped to some extent in doing so as Alex and Jenna scold him by merely invoking his name at the same time. This, to the contrary, does not stop him from putting his back in to making sure that his pupils disappear in to his head as he thinks ‘Yup, _this_ is why I went off to college and medical school, and then came back to my screwed-up hometown’ once he’s no longer being gawked at and the attention has gone back to the out of control man of a _freaking_ foreign species. No matter the patient, they always came first, “Why else do you think the EMTs were stopped from coming in?! He and Isobel are practically walking crime scenes!”.

Alex takes a moment to reflect on this, and tries to use his conclusion to the advantage that he’s afraid it won’t have, “I guess that you were still trying to protect them by doing that. See, Guerin, _even Kyle_ is trying to keep you and Isobel safe! Let’s not make the mistake of looking that gift horse in the mouth! We don’t want to know what happens next!”.

None of this is having any effect on the extraterrestrial cowboy.

“What do we do here?!”

“ _I_ don’t know! _I’m_ not law enforcement, this hasn’t been _my_ house,” the ‘or ever _my_ person’ went with out being said, “in years, and I’m _not_ actually an alien aficionado!”

Alex takes Kyle’s lament as the hint that it unwittingly is, “You know what you’re doing won’t even last! … _‘They want to be together!!!’_ ,” voicing the thing that only he and the other-worldly engineer knows.

This earns a response, though not one that any one wants as it only seems to reinvigorate the perpetrator of destruction, who has now donned a maniacal sneer, making Jenna and Kyle tense further on either side of the human tech genius, and causing _him_ to languish in contrast.

“ ** _… MICHAEL!!!_** ”

The room’s air crackles as the chair-leg-turned-bat falls to the floor from a wrapped hand, and Michael finally turns around to face a thoroughly spent Alex, Jenna and Kyle letting out heavily-held breaths in relief as he does.

The ambulances and fire engines having departed some where during all of the shouting permitted the now eerily quietly still house to be filled by bated breaths from the four individuals in its living room, the humans inside of it not seeing the alien’s muted awe at being called by his first name by the _one_ person who _never_ does that morphing in to his collapse to the floor until it was all coming to fruition, being, for the most part, unaware of the emotional weight he’d been shouldering this _whole_ time.

This swerve-ball fix causes a half-second delay in all three racing over to the now-barely-even-conscious assailant-turned-convalescent, Jenna radioing out to have her boss “Send Isobel Evans in” to have some one in here who might not make this situation worse to help try to explain what had happened here before ‘authorities’ had arrived, being the only one left standing with Alex and Kyle kneeling down to assess Michael’s condition.

“What in the-hell were you thinking?!,” the one who knows him better admonishes, holding up _his_ interrogatee’s head trying to see if he can meet his gaze.

With hooded eyelids, the golden-curly-haired alien coos out, “You called me Michael,” his angelic expression turning mangled in the disappointment of failing Alex yet again, and, with slightly-observed-by-all-in-the-room frustration, his head is let back down to the floor.

“What is _wrong_ with you?!,” the intelligence expert contests, pressing his hands in to his knees.

“You” comes from behind him.

The alert three turn to see Isobel, who had, it would seem, silently entered and re-shut-out the rest of the world at her back, Alex and Jenna raise eyebrows to get her to continue as Kyle went about checking Michael’s blood pressure.

Isobel’s eyes can’t quite meet Alex’s, flickering just shy, “I got in to your head—“.

“I thought that I ‘ _cured_ ’ you of that,” Kyle thwarts, strictly observational, staying focused on the job at-hand, and not needing to hear the explanation to know that the ever-resourceful woman had found a way around _that_ part of the procedure.

The uncharacteristically unkempt woman flails in a staunchly-ironical polished way that only she can, “I got in to your head, because Maria and him were arguing, and—,” only to be interrupted once more.

“Why were he and Maria arguing?,” Alex would like to say that the looks he’s now being given in lieu of a verbal answer confuse him, or, at least, don’t infuriate him even further.

“… She’s not you” is drudged out from the alien on the floor with a wistfulness that would otherwise be quelling to the intended-to person’s soul.

“He’s delirious, ignore him,” Kyle provides cover, though, he’s not exactly sure who for more, Guerin, or his friend.

“Doesn’t mean that’s not what’s in his heart or that it should be ignored,” and, if Alex wasn’t infuriated before, he sure is now, but what else is Isobel supposed to say? She’s tired of seeing the only normally-conscious-during-the-day brother she still has around so unhappy. The egged-on event planner tilts her head, daring any one to not interrupt her again before starting her impromptu testimony a third time, “I got in to your head, because Maria and him were arguing, and I found what you’d been hiding from us,” she justifies, leaving Alex gob-smacked and the others intrigued.

Michael winces as he energizes himself enough to sit up, only to fall back down before he finishes his acquiescence that’s more of a warning to the man he loves, “Yeah!, I’m supposed to be mad at you, remind me to yell at you about that later”.

“I told him – we’d been on the phone – his outrage immediately became nowhere what was with Maria. I could hear Maria trying to convince him not to leave before the line cut out. Some time later, she calls me to tell me where they are, and that I should come. I heard him _screaming_ in the background, and my brother has a habit of getting angry, but I’ve never heard him like that. I heard what sounded like him smashing some thing”. She pantomimes to the reassembling-itself console. “We now know what that was/is. … He was _wailing_ about you, about Max, about your father for some reason, about U Of M, about Rosa, … about a mother I didn’t know he knew he had until today, so I got over here as quickly as I could—“.

“—I loaded up my truck with what I thought I needed, and came over here to find what I didn’t want to believe I’d find—How could you hide that from me?,” asks the alien man with a contorted face from the floor being now fully incapable of moving an inch of his body other than to advocate for his actions, interrupting his own interruption. They all allow him to continue mostly because none of them know what to say at this point. “Maria insisted on coming with me, I looked where Isobel told me I’d find it, and there it was. I put it with the rest to see if it would come on and it did. … And that’s when I knew,” the enduring silence his words are met with urges him to go on with his closed-eyed confession, “I knew that I didn’t want to leave. … I knew that I didn’t want to leave _you_. Let’s just say that thought, combined with what we’ve been through together, and the fact that this new realization made me also realize that I’d now further fucked every thing up with us made me a _little_ upset”.

“So you thought that blowing up my home would be a good idea?!”. Alex can’t take any more.

“ _I **wanted** you to see that **I’m still waiting for you** , that’s **all** I’m **ever** doing, and that I’m not going any where!_,” the utter sincerity of this stuns the room back to stillness, and, eventually, Isobel simply returns to filling in the blanks.

“… Maria must have called me and Liz in succinct succession a while before the emergency line given our arrival times”.

“Liz not wanting to let her out of her sight why _Rosa’s_ here?,” Kyle pipes in, checking the dilation of the limp space cowboy’s eyes.

“Yes, what they would find here evidently wasn’t the safest environment to say the least, but can you blame her?,” Jenna imposes on to the doctor, finally having some thing to contribute again.

Every one in their community had taken notice of how naturally the former high school jock assumed his post as concerned brother to the town’s seminal bad girl they’d all thought had died in a tragic car accident years ago only to just ‘miraculously’ show back up one day, appearing physically unchanged from how she was remembered by those who would whisper about the ‘tawdriness’ of her true paternal lineage once word of that, too, had begun to spread through the lexicon of local discourse, and that very sole revelation of getting to be actual _family_ with one of the members in their especially secretive, even for _their town_ , group (considering that they are the few who know the accuracy of infamous rumors of said town/are the subjects of such rumors) had felt like a positive one to Kyle, so, no, he really couldn’t blame Liz. They are all likely better off, _and safer_ , the more together they stay.

“She was the only one of us who stayed calm. Michael was crying because of all the reasons he’s already said, and some that I still don’t know, Maria was crying over Michael, _I_ was crying over Michael and every thing that’s both his pain and mine, Liz was crying over Maria, Max, and her new friend she calls Mikey, but none of us knew what to do. At one point, that thing sparked, and a small, teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy fire was started”.

“Yeah, that’s when we think your main power went out,” Jenna undercuts.

“—He just kept slamming things around, banging in to what was left of that thing, yelling and crying, all while ignoring us trying to get him to stop, so I finally called you. … Probably should have done that first,” Isobel recounts, noting to herself that she’s usually not that slow on the uptake.

“It _is my_ house, and you say that like I’m the ‘Michael Guerin Whisperer,’ or some thing. _I’m not!_ ,” the once-much-more-self-assured man vies to utilize his former nature, and falls slightly short of pulling off the air of confidence that he had been going for.

“Could’ve fooled me”.

“ _Really?_ ”

“Oh, but you so _assuredly_ are, Alex!“

Michael’s softly blithesome “There it is again!” reverberates over the other coetaneous reactions in Alex’s ears before he’s opportunely instructing Isobel to stay out of his head.

“ _I have a boyfriend!_ ,” he verbally admonishes, destitute for some guise of detachment here.

“Oh, so you do remember him?,” Kyle takes barbed mention of the man he’d thought forgotten, cutting in to Alex’s thoughts in his own way, and, at long last, inflicting on to the man the self-contempt his phrenic lapse has now made way for. _Had he really done it **that** often?_

“Look at him the way you don’t look away from me?” is the galaxy traveler’s quick method of re-consuming all of the systems analyst’s distressed thoughts.

“I swear to God, Michael Guer—,” an outright rueful giggle from the masculine alien in the room and Kyle’s “Hey, Alex, maybe this isn’t the right time for …” stop him from completing his uncouthly articulated, and malignly ineffective, foreboding.

_Now there’s an idea._

The dutifully-installed-in-to-his-career task master charges up and back towards his front door, “ _Time!_ That’s exactly what I need!,” the surrounding desert dry breeze hits him as he opens the way to his exit.

“Where are you going?!”

“Alex!”

“Al—Alex!”

He concisely turns back to impart to his inquisitors that he’s “not doing _this_ right now! I need to be able to _think!_ ” before he’s slugging his own door behind him.

Outside, he unlocks the Jeep, and tries to have his eyes stay trained on it as he makes his proponed steadfast approach.

He’s halted by a delicate yet impervious hand to one of his arms.

“ _Alex?!_ ,” the woman who currently has the mingling scent of cocoa butter, lavender, and both electric and wood ash shrieks, ostensibly confused by how he was just going to leave.

Not _her_. Not _now_. Alex could feel what felt the air spinning around him. He _needed_ space to breathe.

He pushes her hand off of him with all of the venom-infused fury he’d been holding back from her. “ ** _No! Not_** _now!_ ,” he spits out, and twists back around towards the mode of his impending reprieve.

The blood rushing in his ears blocks out both Maria’s and Liz’s dire beckoning calls of his name. He gyres back towards his house and the disheveled women in prying his driver’s-side car door open, sparing Rosa one more thoughtful glance through the roll-down window frame, and jumps in to his vehicle with the clamoring of that door swiftly following. Having begun the ignition, he swerves the steering wheel to take him around his best friend’s truck (and one that he doesn’t want to even look at, although, he does despite there still being a few others on the lot for him to focus on), and drives away with his urethane-foam foot pressed down firmly on the gas pedal. He escapes the unyielding madness of his house, leaving the sheer calamity, pained suffering, and some dust in his wake, and saves any regrets for hindsight.

Back inside of the home, the physician infers to the law enforcement agent that they’ll, ”take him downstairs,” having finished his evaluation, and inserted an IV of fluids. “It’s just severe exhaustion,” he diagnoses, parlaying that the owner “will be sensible enough to understand that they aren’t left with any other options”.

It’s two days later when the fully recovered far-too-often-mercurial-by-even-his-own-admission being emerges from what’s now being dubbed “the medical bunker,” doing his best to not disturb who he’s heard returned to dwell above it, and successfully retreats in his own truck that had remained there since he’d drove it there with his no doubt now-ex-girlfriend in the passenger’s seat, stopping off at his airstream for a shower and a change of clothes, and some already-settled contemplation.

After taking two steps in to The Wild Pony in the not-as-harsh-as-should-probably-feel light of day, he sees Maria appear from what can’t be nowhere, easily carrying boxes that one who didn’t know her would think too heavy.

“Are _all_ extraterrestrials clinically _insane_ or is that just you and Isobel? … You’re no longer welcomed here with out the person I am now fully aware that I should have been an exquisitely better best friend to, so go fight for him, Guerin, because, no matter what ever he says, you two have already wasted enough time,” the bartender deadpans, having put down the cartons of limes in their place while speaking, as she meets him on the other side of the bar of where he’s discordantly roosting himself and sliding that black hat on to the bar beside him.

“Trust me, I’m going to, but I think that you need to first. Our – mine abundantly more than yours – recklessness should not end that friendship. He deserves every— _every_ thing that we can give him, doesn’t he?,” and, with that, he’s collecting his hat, amassing it back on to his head, leaving her as quickly as he came with the knowledge, and hope, that he’s right that it could all be that easy.

It’s hours later, still before her serving hours, when she’s meeting him in front of his porch, having called ahead, barely breathing as she exits the red Chevrolet.

There are no greetings. There are no apologies. She knows that they would never be enough. There’s just a teary, “He’s _it_ for you and that’s okay,” and her hooking her arms under his in a hug.

Alex wants her to not be there, he wants to demand more out of her, he wants to call her out on being so brazen, condemn her for using her emotions against him, he wants to still be able to use Forrest’s presence in his life as a reason for why she’s wrong (he can tell people later how that had ended), _he wants to argue with her_ , but all he can do is hug her back. 

A few hours go by when he hears some one else coming to pay him a visit, only now, this person displays the normal baseline of human behavior by simply knocking on his door.

He stiffens, taking in a deep breath, and letting it out slowly as he goes to open the thick piece of craftsmanship being emphatically rapped upon. He can practically see a storm coming.

He swings it open in an effort to convey the galling jadedness that he shares with the person he thinks that he’s sure to find on the other side. … It was not _that_ jaded person. Their hair black and sleek instead of dark blond coiled strands that could trap his fingers, their skin supple instead of rigid and alluring, and their eyes rimmed in black instead of ones he cannot, in fact _and_ all piqued honesty, look away from. What ever their differences, they both had a predilection of making Alex respond to their presence in the same way: shock and awe, so she had her eyebrows match his as she waited for him to say some thing … any thing.

“… Rosa! Uh, hi, come in. Come in!,” he says, ushering her inside.

He peers around the exterior of his entryway once more, expecting to find Liz, and coming up unexpectantly empty. Kyle had been right about how protective she’s been since her position in their sisterhood had been switched, the realigning more befitting to their respective veritable natures, with her sister’s return.

His attention is jerked back to inside of the house with “It really fucking sucks that you’ve forgotten how I taught you how to not be a pendejo!”.

The man who, only just in the last few months, has started to resemble the boy she sees in him, slams his eyes shut, effectively slipping in to place the mask of the man he thinks his friend needs right now, taking in a deep breath while turning around with a sly simper as he shuts his door behind him with his remaining flesh-and-bone foot.

“You think that _you_ taught me that?”. He goes around the back of the couch that had thankfully remained intact to get them a couple of beers as she side-sits down on it, coming back around to hand her one and sit down next to her, passing her the bottle opener after opening his own stem.

“You know that I did”. Their conjoined laughter is cordial but also candid. “… Where is _he_?,” she reputably queries, leaning over to place the bottle opener on the coffee table.

“I’m right here,” the not-so-reformed goth kid asserts before taking a drag from his drink, and he hopes beyond hope that the tone that he’s put on the words will be placating enough.

“I may not talk so much since coming back, but I listen, and you and Guerin need to get your shit together. It’s time,” she takes a crack at exerting her mandate of being anomalous, and not quite finding her footing.

“It’s complicated” he continues to procrastinate in being forthright.

“I saw, well more _heard_ , and how could it be more complicated than, while you had been stringently older enough to pull seniority over them _before_ , you are now body-and-mind _significantly_ younger than your kid sister and her dumb boyfriend, who you now know, one, hasn’t been her boyfriend in eons, two, is _not_ as dumb as you thought seeing as he’s become a western-civilization medicine man in the time that you’re not so much ‘ _missing_ ’ as was taken from you, _and_ , three, is actually your own half-brother, having discovered that you were a product of an affair shortly before being murdered by a psychotic alien who been possessing the body of the girl you thought liked you, only to be brought back to life by _her_ brother, who has been in what you thought was unrequited love with your not-so-little-any-more sister since they were tykes, ten years later, because, yes, he, the girl you found mystifying, and their secret wrong-side-of-the-law brother, who, sidebar, one of your best friends will spend/has spent … – what tense am I on? – those years jonesing for, are ‘good’ aliens, and _that’s_ a thing, you being reanimated in such a way that the aforementioned alien guy, the one who had a crush on your sister, has to take your place in this weird stasis pod thingy to stay alive, and this meaning that, regardless of how happy she is to have you back, you’re left consoling dear sister, because, turns out, she actually loves the lawman who’s also an awkward other-worldly poet, too, so she’s flat-out distraught when she’s not putting on a needlessly brave face for you or using her science-y brain through all hours of the night in trying to find a way to bring him out with out killing him?,” she takes her knowingly slender preemptive victory over her warranted opponent in the game of citing your alien-conspiracy-ceded angst. “… _Lexie_ , if any one knows what it’s like to lose a decade of not _actually living_ your life while every one else moves on more than you and the guy who wrongfully took what blame he could for what happened that night, it’s me times infinity”. _There’s_ that footing.

Alex used to love/hate her calling him that, now he’s just relieved, despite the massive guilt that comes with that relief due to all of the pain that is still being caused by the sacrifice that was made in bringing her back, that he gets to hear it happen again, and it’s the key to him being capable of falling in to an old, familiar, rhythm with authenticity.

“We never moved on from you, _Violeta_ ,” exchanging poignantly fond expressions with the woman whose private nickname he’d given her when they were sandbox-sized still fit her better than her _real_ name mood-color-wise, “and the death-guilt card, really, Ortecho? I would have thought better of you, and what happened to you not talking much?,” he antes back.

This results in him being shoved a lot harder than he would have thought a recently-dead girl could tousle him. “I can’t explain the talking thing, and, yes!, the death-guilt card, you just got half of a leg shot off, I was _dead_ for _ten years!_ , … I should be out there, living up my life, _making up_ for lost time, but, _instead_ , I’m _here_ , trying to convince _you_ to go _claim_ what you already _own! Go get that alien’s heart!_ ”.

It wouldn’t be valid for him to tell her that maybe heaving word vomit is just what they do now. It had been apropos of the occasion when _she’d_ done it.

The tempestuous friend does know that the woman who has _always_ been wise beyond her years when it comes to matters of the heart is right about him needing to face the music with Guerin, he’s just not ready to say it out loud, yet ...

She gives him a look that acknowledges this and they stay up late together, talking, like any other pair of old friends.

Kyle being a guy means that he has nothing to worry about from his own both, big, and little, simultaneously (thanks to alien powers of resurrection) sister. They can share Alex.

If only two other people could have said the same before they caused so much heartache and despair.

As if she really is psychic after all, inside of a different home that sat in the middle of a different field, Michael receives a curtly informative text message from an ex-lover he hopes will turn back in to a friend. Time would tell if that was asking for too much.

The next morning, after having breakfast with Isobel, through which, he has to repetitively try to stifle and tamper down the nerves that her well-intended advice for how to go about doing what he’s about to do is giving him, he arrives to the military-turned-Manes/Valenti-covert-assignment bunker (for the record, he’s _proud_ of the fact that his is known as the “bio bunker,” he ostentatiously loves the _alliteration_ in It) with sore fingers (that’s what you get when you feverously tap out numerous melodies on a rusty table in search of entropy), and a suspicious mind, seeing as the customarily maximumly-vaulted secure door had been left ajar with a stack of metal chairs.

What Michael didn’t know was that Alex had received a phone call that warned him of that nervous energy and Alex had put most of the chamber’s chairs there to abate said nervousness.

Sensing the cautious presence rounding the corner of the bunker’s entry point, the cognizant coder breathes out, “Let me guess, you’ve given it some thought, and you’ve decided that I should take you back? That’s … some thing, Guerin, but maybe _three days_ isn’t enough time for me to think about what you did and what it means for us”.

Michael would think that Alex could read his mind as the man seems to have just quoted the show that Michael’s last thought had him thinking back on if communication wasn’t their biggest problem. “… Yeah, I’m sure that you have _plenty_ of time to think about _us_ when you’re with your _boyfriend_ ,” he angrily attests.

“I broke up with Forrest,” combats the soldier, white-knuckle fists wrapped firm around the ears of a chairback, careening his head up on a swivel to consent to their eyes meeting again, and doing his best to remove any vulnerabilities from the face he’s manifesting.

The other man has to outwardly wrestle through being dumbstruck before speaking. “… And, in that way, Maria and me are _undeniably_ over, but, unlike my break up being _completely about you_ , why am I getting the feeling that yours had nothing to do with me?”.

Maybe Alex’s face was _too_ good. “How could it _not_ be?! … Contrary to its lore, this town does talk, Guerin, and guys tend to not be okay with other men almost _blowing up their boyfriend’s house in an act of devotion!_ ,” the persecuted further becoming the prosecutor, he has to take it a step past what was necessary and completely accurate, “ _He_ dumped _me_! I didn’t _choose_ you!”. _Why are they like this?! **Why** couldn’t he just be totally honest with Michael and tell him that he was all he thought about even when he **was with** Forrest? Why couldn’t he tell him that he’d **always** choose Michael if asked for what was in his heart?_

“So my psychotic episode _did have **one** positive outcome?_”

“God damn it, Michael!,” Alex tries to ignore the triumphant leer that flashes across the other man’s face, “You’re _really still_ going to pretend that didn’t have a lot more to do with Max, Rosa, and every thing else?,” he, ever the one to downplay his importance in his preferred alien’s eyes, addends.

Alex had watched as the arms and legs that Michael had crossed in front of himself in his perched slant against one of the room’s tables become noticeably more taunt upon the mention of a brother’s name, and it bore at some thing that had been broken in Alex for years that the owner of his heart’s demeanor could change that much with just that, even more so that he’d been the one to inflict both exemplified edges.

“We’re all working together to bring him back. I’m making sure of it,” the renown wrangler of the tight-knit circle of friends as they were swears, culpable of not being able to go on witnessing the love of his life, or Liz for that matter, be in this much pain for the rest of his life.

Alex had said the words with such an indomitable surety that the alien artificer actually believes him, “Careful, Alex, I might get to hoping that you care, _and we wouldn’t want **that!**_ ”.

“It wasn’t _that_ long ago that I _was_ prepared to die in a fiery death with you, because _I_ meant it when I said that you’re my family, so **_don’t_** _lie_ to yourself by thinking that I don’t care!”

“I really am a miserable liar, and that’s why you should know that the other day _was_ mostly about you, Alex, I love you in the present and future tenses, who’s the one _really_ lying to themselves?! … I love you. _Why can’t that be enough?_ ”

“We don’t make each other happy,” Alex discerns, scrounging for a level head.

“ _Says you!, … and maybe I think that happiness is overrated, that **maybe** there **might** be more to **feeling** **alive!**_ ”  
  
“ _Did happiness **feel overrated** when you were with **Maria?!**_ ”

“ _Did it seem like enough for **you when you were with Forrest?! You didn’t seem like you had any complaints!**_ ”

Alex’s next words scare him. He knows that they’ll be a tipping point either way. He says them, any way, “Maybe _I’m_ worried that **_I’m_** not _enough_ _for **you**_ ”.

“ ** _DESPITE HIDING THE THING THAT YOU THOUGHT WAS KEEPING ME HERE WHEN THAT’S ACTUALLY YOU?! … I am LITERALLY a non-Earthly organism who’s planetary race, luckily, just happens to look like yours_** _, and I **still** honestly would rather be **with you over ANY one else on, from, or even IN any planet!**_ ,” was _barked_ back at Alex.

“ _THEN HOW COULD YOU **EVER** THINK THAT **I** WANT TO BE WITH ANY ONE ELSE?!_”

The moment combusts with their bodies colliding.

They kiss. They kiss languidly, they kiss fervently, they kiss with abandon. They kiss, they grab, they caress, they claw at, and their groans are met with moans. They build a saccharine heat between them that burns so hot that Michael thinks that some one might have to call 9-1-1 again just to put him out of his own sweet misery. Why do those who are from where ever he’s from and humans alike need air to breathe?! He forces himself to push Alex away with the hands that he has on his hips, the ones he’s been using to hold the ardent man against him, and presses their foreheads together.

“We can’t keep crashing together like this,” he sets as an edict as he extrapolates off of the theory that it’s best to address the root of ones’ issues head-on, “it’s never going to get us where we want to be. We _need_ to learn how to actually _talk_ to each other _with out_ there being metaphorical, or literal, explosions, or, more often than not in our case, both, being somehow involved. I don’t want _this_ to _ever_ end again,” breathing the words against his reacquainted lover’s lips, and relishing in the feeling of the consequential rare shiver that he can feel being experienced by the normally, as only he’s known him to be up until this expectantly new venture of their saga, stoic-at-best, and resolutely-angry-at-worst, beautiful being inside of his embrace.

“Explosions, of any kind, _really_ do _blow_ ,” Alex meagerly susses out in an overtly-poor attempt at removing the depth of his desperation to do precisely what was being proffered to him, and, for some ‘un-Godly reason,’ lessen the true value of the euphoria he’s just been blessed with being subjected to. He doesn’t know if his heart can take his mind lingering on that kind of tranquility.

“And not in a positive, life-affirming, way,” Michael answered back, the proper queer that he’s vehemently been for over the last decade shining through before he nips at Alex’s lips as the atmosphere in the former military bunker turns serious again.

Morbidly morose components of the various explosions they’ve been through together that had been suppressed seconds ago for the reverence of the serene exhibition of romance are now able to come to the surface. Images of the woman his research files told him was named Nora Truman, or, at least, that’s what she’s called in the dossier on her, splinter in to Alex’s mind. Dead mothers. Could there be any thing worse for a boy who had already been separated from her? Alex could sympathize with the lesser trauma, but he also knew a boy, by way of the boy’s father, who could more fully identify with the harbinger of his heart’s grief, doing so in a way that any grown man should respect, and that had given him an idea. He just doesn’t know if this new chrysalis of their relationship is ready to withstand that degree of scrutiny if it will ever be.

Moments have gone by when Alex grants that they’ve both been quiet for long enough for two people whom are in the safe bubble of each other’s arms and still had considerable concerns to vocalize. Decisions _have_ to be _made_.

“… I’ve heard that _therapy_ isn’t _actually_ _that_ bad,” Alex ponders more than informs, knowing that’s an other favor that he owes some one, “though, we will have to figure out a way around having to talk about the topic of how you’re actually not from around here”.

That last realization has them chuckling in a way that’s reminiscent to the way that they had when Michael confirmed that he’d never been with a guy before.

“…You’d do that with me?,” implores Michael, searching Alex’s eyes for solemn truth as the giddiness cannot be tongue-swiped from his mouth. Michael trying would only make that ‘problem’ worse.

“You’re _really_ not much of a genius if you don’t know that I’d do _any_ thing with you by now,” Alex laughs earnestly, and Michael does the same before they’re, lips-first, _delicately_ folding back in to each other.

The intoxicating, truly interstellar, haze of passion is eventually interrupted by the prevalent buzzing of Alex’s phone. Reluctantly, he pulls his mouth away from Michael’s just enough to be able to look down at the device, and seeing the two faces who keep his faith in the potential for goodness and innocence in father-and-son relationships alive is his reward for not being so single-minded that he would have just ignored the intrusion. His expression goes from ‘tender, yet frustrated, and lustful’ to an other kind of tender and beaming with a welcoming pride. Ears must have been burning.

“Please tell Christopher how much responsibility comes with having a dog” chimes through as a virtual prayer once Alex finally answers.

“Did you actually think that I would do that, … or that it would work, and is that _really_ the favor you wanna’ trade in and _so soon_?” is the exact answer Alex gives and that Eddie had feared. Alex knows that he can wait until later to explain to his friend how it’s actually two that he owes him now.

“… No,” Eddie sighs, though not completely ready to accept defeat. He’d been brutalized by the latest onslaught of pictures of Buffy on the app. (that he now regrets opening) sparking fitting, and revisited pleading, puppy-dog eyes on his son’s face, having thought his and Chris’s joint Instagram account would be a good set up to keep the boy busy while other teams and/or the dispatcher at the station watched him when ever his team was out on a Call on this fortuitous Teacher Work Day when Carla had been sick, so he had hoped, knowingly in vain, that he could swindle the non-canine culprit of this obvious dilemma he’d since found himself in of trying to deny his son’s fresh appeals of getting a dog of their own in to helping him get out of said dilemma. Buck’s doctors appointment isn’t the only reason why he wasn’t Eddie’s first choice for back-up on this matter. He _knows_ that Ev—Buck would actively encourage Eddie to add on to their little family with a furry friend. Eddie really wishes that he could hate himself just a little bit for being able to think like that about his best friend.

“… Kind of could have used you here the other day. I beat yo—,” Alex, who had actually been thrilled to be able to _at least_ tell his friend that he ‘got the guy ( _back, sort of,_ in his case)’ first, was cut off by a new voice at a distance that rapidly booms louder on the line, and contently sighs before kissing Michael’s neck.

“BUCK: 2! BLOOD THINNERS: 0! I’M BACK TO FULL-ON BUCK! _FEEL THE BUCK! … COME AND GET YOUR BUCK_ ”. Alex takes in how the guy’s audible excitement grew much more earnest and sincere with that last part.

Michael whimpers impatiently.

Alex grins against Guerin’s neck as he listens to what he knows is crutches clinking off of tile and a boy giggling as he’s being scooped up in to caring arms, “That him?,” he prompts with a curious smile on his face having reared back from Michael to stretch his stiffening spine, hoping that Eddie is too distracted to perceive the leading objective in his tone.

“Yeah …” Eddie breathes out before he can think better of it.

Is Alex seriously going to have a _conversation_ with _some one else_ right now? Michael telekinetically flies Alex’s phone out of his hand to being pressed against his own ear, so he doesn’t have to unwrap his arms from Alex’s waist to expedite getting back to his more-than-epic make up with the love of his life, “Alex has to go now!”.

He pauses upon overhearing an adorable scene play out between two men and a little boy, indicating that the caller hadn’t been paying attention, and the familiar banter was too beguiling to cut off. He was an obnoxious ass some times. He was not heartless. He proceeds to float the phone out slightly so Alex is sure to hear what it is that he hears. They share a knowing look.

After the flirting being volleyed by the two oblivious men becomes nauseating, Alex can’t take any more, and he leans back in against Michael to scream in to his phone. “Hey, _Evan!_ , he’s in love with you!”.

If he had any impression that it was his place to do so, Michael would have added, ‘Stop driving each other crazy! You’ll be _extremely_ lucky if _that_ ends well!,’ purely going off of what he’s just heard, the grin that he’s giving Alex growing wider as if he had said it while he does internally thank the stars he’s traveled through that they’re past that point in their love ballad.

They can just barely hear scurrying and the wincing hush that comes before “¡Dios mio! It’s not that simple! You know that I have Chris, … and _maybe_ a dog, to think about …”.

The Air Force Captain lets a laugh escape him ensuingly at overhearing the formerly unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line pose the not-so-obvious question of “Are we getting a puppy?!” while obtusely ignoring the obvious declaration that Alex had made on Eddie’s behalf. He then raises a single skilled eyebrow, asking Michael for permission, and takes back his phone when Michael simply shrugs, “Ask Christopher what November 27th, 2018 is”.

“November 27, 2018?,” Eddie muses with out thinking of his surroundings.

“ _Alex!_ ,” both Alex and Michael can easily hear the boy whine through the mobile phone line, “You’re not supposed to tell Daddy that I lost the bet with the rest of the station and Aunt Maddie!”.

“Bet with the rest of the station and Aunt Maddie?,” Eddie and Buck questioned in unison, both putting emphasis on ‘ _Aunt_ Maddie’ as Buck gently glides Christopher back down to the station’s balcony floor, puzzled by the look of hope that floods the boy’s face, and even more so by the look of terror that has sunk onto his best friend’s face.

All Christopher can think is ‘Is this _it_? Is this _finally_ the moment when my Dad and the man-child who I view as a dad stop being such idiots? I’m _eight_ and I thought this would happen over a _year_ ago! I have Cerebral Palsy, and, alright, I’ve needed glasses since I was able to move around enough to bump in to things, but I’m not _blind_ , and _any_ body could see these knuckleheads’ hearteyes from _Jupiter_! … Tía Pepa always says that the holidays are to be with the ones you _love_ after all!’ as each member of the trio’s visual focus goes from looking at one then the other and back again with distinct variations of trepidation.

The standoff is followed by Buck’s _acutely_ delayed “… ‘In _love_ with’? … I think that you and I need to have a _talk_ , Eddie, … and I think that they were right to make a bet. I wonder who won“ as he’s suddenly very in-tune with the situation. He’s blushing by the end of his coy admission at, not only having his and Eddie’s apparently _mutual_ true feelings for each other finally being verbally addressed, but, apparently, also them having some thing in common with their captain and Athena, and he can’t see it as he hadn’t stop looking at Eddie since he began talking again, but his words had Christopher’s face lighting up upon impact like it’s now being powered in kilowatts, though, Eddie could with the two people he cares most for in this world still being in the same line of sight, and the combination of the undeniable jubilance on Christopher’s face and Buck’s shy-yet-impulsive words ignited a permeation of hope in him that he didn’t know he’s still capable of forming. Eddie’s face begins to match his son’s which makes Buck’s follow suit.

Back in Roswell, Alex laughs as he says “ _Bye!_ ,” he aptly proceeds to disconnect the call, tossing his phone on to the desk, and winds his arms back around Michael’s neck so he can return to the cosmic kissing, knowing full well that Edmundo Diaz and Evan Buckley had some kissing to do of their own, preferably _not_ in front of _their_ kid and before their next call out, _alone_ in a bunk room not at all like this one, and, likewise, also not in front of their co-workers as they presumably cheered, whistled, and tallied up cash accordingly.

“What _was THAT_?!,” Michael asks, incredulously.

Alex hums, “Do you _really_ want to know or would you rather get back to this?,” gesturing between them.

And, with that, Michael ‘Rath Of Antar’ Guerin commences devouring Alex Manes’s (one day, after some of that therapy that they were just talking about, Alex Guerin’s) mouth.

**Epilogue:**

That year, LA’s Station 118 had decided to put out their own exclusive calendar for charitable proceeds, and, from the communal carelessness in the suggestive vulgarity of the shared page for the month of May shown by Buck and Eddie on it, the philanthropic paraphernalia was clearly photographed after the interference from a friend from a notorious New Mexico town had gotten them to 'go there'. Not to be outdone, and providing wholly equal-opportunity-guided services to the public from the onset of Bobby Nash’s tenure of California fire Captain, _his_ February scene with Sergeant Grant is equitably aflame with sensuality while Hen and Karen have even vaguely quizzically questioning women feeling the heat come next July (Chimney and Maddie’s November portrait can’t manage to surpass the sweltering of a Precious Moments advent).

Dr. Kyle Valenti does not complain that this is his Christmas gift from the Manes who meddled. He does, however, complain when the women in his life try to steal it off of him. What surprises him is that one of the woman is his sister.

Also, Alex can’t promise that he won’t propel his propensity for interfering with his loved ones’ romantic entanglements in to a winning streak by setting up the pair of deviant vixens who think that it is within modern-day social norms of acceptable human, or alien, behavioral constructs to call ahead before an un-enthusiastically-wanted visitor is set to show up at your door _only_ _once_ they are ready for some thing new after having suffered separate break ups that had both met violent ends, because their endless dance of incessant fluttering eyelashes and ponytail hair-pulls has worn his restraint down over the years since three kids from an other planet swept out of pods, and in to his, and his closest friends, lives, altering, or answering, the turbulent trajectories of each for ever. … He has yet to find some one truly worthy of one Rosa ‘Violeta’ Ortecho.

**Author's Note:**

> November 27th, 2018 is the day after the first "9-1-1" Christmas episode originally aired, I meticulously didn't have Eddie fall in to the old military trope of calling Alex by his surname as both, a nod to Eddie's comments in his first episode, and out of respect to Alex, Michael doesn't know his Antarian name here (that was just a nod to readers), and you're crazy if you think that I'm not going to do a Buddie-centric companion piece to this on my own time.
> 
> ... I used her to begin the bookend of this story, but forgot to put Buffy _actually in_ the story, so my fix for this is the knowledge the adoption process takes time with above-board pet adoptions. So, while Alex does already have a lot of pictures of Buffy, she does not live with him yet in this story.


End file.
